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Death risk increased in depressed coronary stent patients

Depression increases the risk of death in patients who have a coronary stent implanted, according to research presented at the 12th Annual Spring Meeting on Cardiovascular Nursing, held recently in Copenhagen, Denmark.

After seven years of follow up, depressed patients were found to be 1.5 times more likely to have died than non-depressed patients. The findings were independent of age, gender, clinical characteristics, anxiety and the distressed (Type D) personality.

Depression has been associated with poor outcomes in coronary artery disease but previous studies have mainly looked at short term effects, primarily in patients who have had a myocardial infarction or a coronary bypass operation. The current study (FPN 17) investigated the impact of depression on mortality during a 7-year follow up period in patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

For the study, 1,234 PCI patients aged 26-90 years from the Rapamycin- Eluting Stent Evaluated At Rotterdam Cardiology Hospital (RESEARCH) registry completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) to assess depression six months after having a stent implanted. The endpoint was all-cause mortality.

The prevalence of depression was 26.3%. After 7 years there were 187 deaths in total (15.2%). The incidence of all-cause mortality in depressed patients was 23.5% (76 out of 324 patients) versus 12.2% (111 out of 910 patients) in non-depressed patients.

Male gender, older age, and diabetes mellitus were also significantly associated with an increased risk of death after seven years of follow up, whereas statins were associated with a reduced risk. Anxiety and Type D personality had no significant effect on all-cause mortality.

“The main finding is that patients who are depressed after coronary stenting have a worse prognosis,” says lead author Nikki Damen, a PhD student at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. “They die earlier than non-depressed patients.”

“Doctors and nurses have traditionally focussed on medical factors like diabetes or family history of cardiovascular disease when assessing PCI patients’ risk of death, but that’s not the whole picture,” says Ms Damen. “Psychological factors do matter as well, in combination with the medical factors.”

She adds: “More research is needed to determine how to screen for depression in cardiovascular patients, and then how to provide treatment.”